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Narrative C haracter of C hristian Social IHIilc*
the church is also a polity that at one time had the confidence to encourage in
its members virtues sufficient to sustain their role as citizens in a society
whose purpose was to counter the unwarranted claims made by other societies
and states. Indeed, only if such people exist is it possible for the state to be
“ secular.” Because the church rarely now engenders such a people and
community, it has failed our particular secular polity: Christians have lacked
the power that would enable themselves and others to perceive and interpret
the kind of society in which we live. Christians have rightly thought that they
have a proper investment in making this, and other societies, more nearly just,
but have forgotten that genuine justice depends on more profound moral
convictions than our secular polity can politically acknowledge.
Christians must again understand that their first task is not to make the
world better or more just, but to recognize what the world8 is and why it is that
it understands the political task as it does. The first social task of the church is
to provide the space and time necessary for developing skills of interpretation
and discrimination sufficient to help us recognize the possibilities and limits
of our society. In developing such skills, the church and Christians must be
uninvolved in the politics of our society and involved in the polity that is the
church. Theologically, the challenge of Christian social ethics in our secular
polity is no different than in any time or place—it is always the Christian
social task to form a society that is built on truth rather than fear. For the
Christian, therefore, the church is always the primary polity through which we
gain the experience to negotiate and make positive contributions to whatever
society in which we may find ourselves.
2. A Critique of Our Society
Insofar as many Christians assume that our liberal and secular society is
at least neutral to, if not positively an advantage for, the church, we have
failed to see and understand the depth of the moral challenge facing this
society. Of course we all recognize our society has problems, but we assume
our society and politics have the means to deal with them. We have no reason
to question fundamentally our “ form of government” or the “American way
of life.” Rather, as Christians we assume we have a stake in America’s ex
traordinary experiment to create a free people through the mechanism of
democratic government.9
We thus feel puzzled by critiques of our society such as that of Sol
zhenitsyn. For it is the brunt of his charge that a polity is ultimately judged by
the kind of people it produces, and from such a perspective our society can
only be found wanting. He suggests that for all the injustice and terror of the